Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp.

37–50, 2009 0892-3310/09

ESSAY

Brain and Consciousness: The Ghost in the Machines

JOHN SMYTHIES
Center for Brain and Cognition, U.C.S.D.
and Institute of Neurology, University College, London, UK
e-mail: smythies@psy2.ucsd.edu

Abstract—This paper reviews four current theories of brain-consciousness

relations—classical Cartesian Dualism, the Identity Theory, Eliminative Materi-
alism, and a new form of Substance Dualism that includes a modified form of the
Cartesian theory. This entails a critical examination of our basic concepts
of what consciousness is, of the nature of the body image, and the relation of
phenomenal space to physical space. This investigation reaches the same result
as that attained recently by the physicist Bernard Carr (2008)—that what is
needed is a paradigm shift in our basic concepts of the geometry of the Universe.
In order to understand phenomenal consciousness we need to replace the present
four-dimensional model with a higher-dimensional structure, in which a phe-
nomenal space (with its contents) and physical space (with its contents) are
different cross-sections (branes) of a higher-dimensional space (the bulk).
Keywords: brain—consciousness—mechanisms—substance dualism—brane
theory

Introduction
The scientific account of a person’s consciousness and its relation to her brain
that is most prominent today holds that the brain is no more than a single vastly
complex electrochemical machine. The function of the brain is to discover what is
going on in the physical world around the organism and to use this information to
guide behavior optimally with respect to the short-term and long-term needs of
the organism. The pinnacle of this information-processing and control system is
held to be manifest as phenomenal consciousness—the world that a person’s Self
experiences—the microcosm inside the macrocosm—that is constructed by the
representative mechanisms of perception that have their terminals in the brain.
The account of brain and consciousness presented in this essay extends this
concept one stage further. Currently it is widely believed that the physical body
(plus its brain) is the only organism that a human being possesses. However, this
is not a necessary truth but only an a priori assumption. I suggest that phenomenal
consciousness is also a highly organized and complex entity. Up to now this orga-
nization has been accounted for either by identifying phenomenal consciousness
and its brain in various ways, or by the Cartesian denial that any such organization

37
38 J. Smythies

exists. What is missed by this dichotomy is the possibility of a substance dualism

in which a phenomenal consciousness (a person’s ‘consciousness module’) and its
brain are two ontologically independent parts of a human organism located in
different but related spaces (in two of the parallel universes of brane theory), and
connected by causal relations (mechanism). The Cartesian theory is a form of
Substance Dualism in which one party is material and the other is not (‘the ghost
in the machine’ or ‘unextended thinking spirits’). The key difference between the
two Cartesian realms is extension in space—physical matter is extended, mind is
not. In this new theory (Material Dualism or Extended Materialism) both realms
contain material, and both are spatial. Each is in a brane of its own, and both
branes are cross-sections of a common higher-dimensional bulk. Key differences
between them are the type of material contained in each (atoms versus phenome-
nal objects) and their spatial location relative to each other. There is not one
machine with its attendant ghost: there are two machines. However, as we will
see, it will be necessary to introduce a modified form of the Cartesian theory to
complete the theory so as to explain the Self.
The traditional classical Cartesian doctrine, that humans consist of body
(including its brain) and a mind, is not fashionable in Academia today. In its place
we are witnessing a vigorous competition between two rival theories. One is
provided by the monistic mind-brain Identity Theory of cognitive neuroscience.
The other is neo-Wittgensteinian philosophy, that holds that the answers to the
mind-brain problem come from analytical philosophy, and a study of ordinary
language, not neuroscience (Bennett & Hacker, 2003). The present essay presents
arguments that suggest that all three of these theories are mistaken.

What Phenomenal Consciousness Is

There are two main senses of ‘consciousness’ in the current debate. The first is
the medical-behavioral sense, as when the nurse says, “The patient is recovering
consciousness, Doctor.” This can be investigated by studying those brain states
that result in coma (Smythies, “The Neurochemistry of Consciousness,” in press)
and by brain imaging studies that identify those neurons and brain areas (the
neural correlates of consciousness, or NCCs) whose functions co-vary with
various states of consciousness. The second is the phenomenal Lockean sense,
in which consciousness is all that we experience—a person’s own sensations,
images, feelings, memories and thoughts. This can be studied by introspective
methods used in psychophysics and perceptual science (as, for example, when we
examine the properties and behavior of an after-image). “For example much of
our visual consciousness presents itself as being extended, images and after-
images having shape, size and location in the visual field, and we describe the
phenomenal realm of which we are aware as a ‘manifold’ . . .” (Allen, 2006).
Subsidiary methods study the link of consciousness to such functions as attention,
as well as to how terms like ‘see,’ ‘mind,’ ‘consciousness’ and ‘hallucination’ are
used (a) in ordinary speech and (b) in a psychological laboratory. This essay will
focus on phenomenal consciousness.
 Brain and Consciousness 39

Francis Crick (1994) provided good arguments against trying at this stage to
define consciousness: it is better at this early stage in our enquiry to try our best to
describe it. Schilder (1942, 1950) introduced the useful strategy of starting this
task at the simplest level. So stretch yourself out on your bed in the dark and
ask yourself what you can observe. Most people would say at first “Nothing.”
However, further observation shows that this is not right. As Ladd (1892) reported
“Ask people what they customarily see when their eyes are closed in a dark room
and they will reply that they see nothing. Ask them to observe more carefully and
describe what they see, and they will probably speak of a dark mass or wall before
their eyes.” Schilder (1942) said, “Even with our eyes closed, black is perceived
as a spatial relation.” And Wright (1981) states, “Blackness, as Locke knew well,
and Lord Brain has reminded us, is a positive state, i.e. it is a sensory condition of
the mind’s presence room [that is, the visual field].”
What more can we say about this black expanse that makes up the primitive
visual field? Firstly it is limited, not limitless, in extent. It does not have a clear-
cut boundary but, nevertheless, fades out at the periphery. Its shape is roughly
circular—certainly not squareish, for example. Moreover, there is only one such
expanse, not two, although we can easily imagine what it would be like to have
two or more. Galton (1883) takes it further: “I should have emphatically declared
that my field of view in the dark was essentially of a uniform black, subject to a
light purple cloudiness and other small variations. Now, however, . . . I have found
out that this is by no means the case, but that a kaleidoscopic change of patterns
and forms is continually going on, . . . .”
During the earliest stage of mescaline intoxication I have observed that these
kaleidoscopic patterns are potentiated and evolve directly into the hallucinations
typical of the psychedelic state. During sensory deprivation experiments, this
black field can develop a much more intense black color—super-black—and can
become three-dimensional. “The black curtain in front of the eyes [read ‘eyes of
the body image’] gradually opens out into a three-dimensional dark, empty space
in front of the body [read ‘body image’]. The phenomenon captures one’s interest
immediately, and one wants to find out what comes next” (Lilly, 1956).
Schilder’s ‘primitive’ visual field can also be studied by the Ganzfeld
technique. A ping-pong ball is cut into two and one-half is cupped over each eye.
This results in a white and featureless visual field that is seen as a “mist of light”
or a “filmy surface” separated from “me” by empty space (Cohen, 1957). This
homogeneous Ganzfeld was reported to be “close at hand” or “just in front of the
eyes” by all Cohen’s subjects. The modal judgment of this distance was about
2 inches.
Thus, the primitive visual field may be observed to have a number of
properties.
1. There is just one visual field.
2. This has intrinsic spatial extension (two dimensional) as well as a three-
dimensional distance from the observer.
40 J. Smythies

3. It has spatial properties—i.e., a center, a periphery and an overall shape

(roundish).
4. It is colored, with black as apparently the default color.
5. There is an observer (“me”) set back by an apparent 2 inches.
The system also has a cognitive dimension. The field does not just exist, basic or
complex, but is always taken up into perception of some kind, either in everyday
life, or as part of some psychological experiment. In the latter I typically observe
its features and can name them—e.g., “there’s a red after-image,” “that’s a
veridical percept that shows me that there is a red rose out there,” etc. Neurologi-
cal lesions show that the phenomenology and the epistemology of this system are
processed by different brain mechanisms. In associative agnosia the patient can
see perfectly well but cannot recognize what she is seeing (De Renzi, 2000). In
blindsight the patient can see nothing but can recognize (“guess” correctly) what
the object ‘out there’ is, including its color. Blindsight is mediated by pathways
that pass directly from the lateral geniculate body to the higher visual cortex in the
left occipito-temporal area by-passing the primary visual cortex.
One must also distinguish between the Self (“me”) and what I experience. As
Maund (2008) puts it, “. . . there are at least two aspects to knowing what it is like
to have a certain experience. One concerns what it is like to be the subject of an
experience; another aspect concerns the ‘phenomenal’ or ‘qualitative’ character of
the experience.” I will deal with what is experienced first and then return to the
Self later.
When I open my eyes in the light, the visual field changes instantly and
becomes filled with organized, coherent patches of color that I take naively to be
direct views of the contents of the world around me—what Crick (1994) called
“the vivid picture of the world that we see in front of our eyes,” and again, “Our
inner visual picture of the external world has a unity.” Broad (1923) describes the
visual field as follows: “So long as it is light and one’s eyes are open, one really is
directly apprehending something, though it is not what one uncritically takes it to
be. This something is an extended, spatially continuous, variously colored and
shaded field, which is presented as a finite but unbounded whole.”
This account of the visual field, as presenting a picture of the external world,
can be thought of as incorporating the principles (but not of course the exact
details) of the mechanism by which television works, and has been almost
uniformly rejected by contemporary philosophers and vision scientists on the
grounds that no such pictures are to be found in the brain, and because this
hypothesis leads to a nasty infinite regress of little green men in the head (more on
this later).
In the case of somatic sensation most people still believe that the familiar ‘body’
that they experience simply is the physical body composed of muscles, bones and
organs. The pain of a toothache is simply in the physical tooth. As Descartes
(1931) put it, “Nature also teaches me by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst,
etc. that I am not only lodged in my body like a pilot in a vessel, but that I am very
 Brain and Consciousness 41

closely united to it, and so to speak, so intermingled with it that I seem to compose
with it one whole.”
However, observations from clinical neurology show that this view is, in one
particular, mistaken. The vessel of Descartes’ pilot is not the physical body, but it
is the body image that is composed of all manner of somatic sensations: “The
brain creates a body image, and pains, like all bodily sensations, are parts of the
body image” (Searle, 1992). The pain of a toothache is not located in the physical
tooth but in the tooth of the body image.
Most people are familiar with the fact that individuals who have had a limb
amputated still report afterwards feeling the limb. Philosophers tend to dismiss
this as a ‘delusion’ or an ‘illusion’—i.e., as not ‘real.’ However, it is neither. A
delusion is a false belief. The person who says she experiences a phantom limb
is telling the truth. She does not claim to have a real limb, which would be a
delusion. She reports correctly that she has a somatic sensation. An illusion is the
misperception of a real object. A phantom limb is not the misperception of a real
limb since there is no real limb. A phantom limb is, rather, a hallucination. It
does not represent a new order of being. A phantom limb is just the old familiar
phenomenal limb that is still generated by brain mechanisms in the absence of
any input from the physical limb. The neurons that generate it are located in the
parietal cortex. Removal of this cortex abolishes the phantom. Phantom limbs
can often be moved either voluntarily or involuntarily, as when the limb extends
automatically to ‘catch’ a ball thrown at the person. As for reality, the pain in
a phantom limb is at times real enough to drive the patient to suicide. Nor is
a phantom limb some kind of learned phenomenon, for people with congenital
absence of limbs can report phantoms (Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998).
Nida-Rümelin (2008) gives a good example of the confusion of the body image
and the physical body. “We see the [colors] outside there on the thing perceived
. . . when reflecting on the phenomenal character of our own experience we are not
looking inside. We are not perceiving what is going on in our brain or looking into
some inner space” (pp. 314–315). On the contrary, phenomenal colors are only
located outside relative to the body image, and not outside relative to the physical
body. A phenomenal color is a part of my visual field, which the evidence
suggests, in my opinion, is a part of my own organism.
However, to avoid philosophical confusion, it is better not to say that we
perceive what is going on in our brains, or in our private phenomenal spaces,
since, by definition, we should say that we perceive only external objects.
Sensations are only a part of the process of perception, but we do not perceive
sensations. Psychologists, during the course of their experiments, can examine or
observe (but not perceive) their own sensations, veridical or hallucinatory, but that
is for different purposes. We do not say that we perceive what is going on in our
brains, not for the reason Nida-Rümelin gives, but because we cannot confuse a
part of a process with the whole process. Having sensations is the last step in the
complex representative chain of perception. Perceiving external physical objects
involves the whole chain.
42 J. Smythies

Vision and Television

The current scientific account of how vision and visual consciousness works
extends from retina to cortex. A great deal is known about how the information
delivered on the retina is transposed by numerous serial and parallel neurocompu-
tations at all levels into the activation of specific patterns of neuronal activity in
the visual brain. In a recent review Mesulam (1998) says that brain mechanisms
help to create a highly edited subjective version of the world. The question
then remains—what is the relation between this “highly edited subjective version
of the world” in the brain and the ever-changing contents of a phenomenal
consciousness? As Grossberg (1987) says, “When we gaze upon a scene, our
brains combine many types of locally ambiguous visual information to rapidly
generate a globally unambiguous representation of form-in-color-in-depths . . .
how do . . . multiple sources of visual information preattentively cooperate to
create a three-dimensional form?”
The visual field presents in some sense the end result of all these neurocompu-
tations. But how does the system convert the buzzing activity of billions of
neurons into Crick’s “our vivid internal picture of the external world”? When I
examine my visual field I can see Crick’s point. I can readily understand the
claim that it is a picture of the world and a televisual picture at that. A ‘television’
theory of perception is any theory that states that the visual field in consciousness
is constructed by some form of representative mechanism. An ordinary television
picture is built up by a specific mechanism—a raster in the case of older analog
systems, and pixels in the case of digital television. If I examine my visual field I
can detect no signs of grain betraying a raster or a pixel system, but I can easily
imagine what it would be like to do so. In the case of a digital system there would
be small dots in my visual field: in the case of an analog system there would be
thin lines. Therefore, if there is such a system, it must be extraordinarily fine
grained. That is not impossible, yet many people claim that there are insuperable
difficulties to a televisual theory of visual perception. I will therefore review these
difficulties.

The Missing Pixels

One criticism of any television theory of visual perception and phenomenal
consciousness is that it says that vision ends in a series of television images,
yet, when one looks into the brain, there are no such images to be found. The
conclusion usually drawn is that no such images exist. Therefore we should throw
the TV theory out. However, there is another conclusion that may be drawn, and
that is that these TV images are not in the brain but in the mind. This theory may
be put as follows. The key points are (1) phenomenal space and physical space
are not different aspects of the same space, but are different spaces, or different
subsections of a common higher-dimensional space. “. . . there is equal motivation
to distinguish subjective or phenomenal space from that invoked in our physical
descriptions of the world” (Allen, 2006). “All this [the physiological account of
 Brain and Consciousness 43

perception] has a consequence that has not been adequately recognized, namely
that the space in which the physical table is located must be different from the
space we know by experience” (Russell, 1948). (2) Phenomenal space is not an
empty abstract space, but has real contents, e.g., the body image and ‘phenomenal
visual scenes’ that a neurologist would call visual sensations. (3) Phenomenal
consciousness is the final step of a TV mechanism (as defined above). (4) The
human organism (physical body + a consciousness module) is distributed in both
realms. (5) There are two types of real matter in the cosmos—physical stuff (e.g.,
atoms, brains, stars) located in one space, and mind stuff (sensations, images and
thoughts) located in another space. Both generate equally real events that interact
causally in both directions. This point requires further elaboration. One could
say that minds are entities made of mind stuff and that experienced sensations,
images, thoughts, and feelings would then be states, processes or functions of the
substantial mental system. Alternatively one could say that sensations, images,
thoughts and feelings are different kinds of mind stuff and that their coexistence
in a consciousness module makes up a substantial mind. These could perhaps
be combined with the statement that we are dealing here with a whole—a
consciousness module—made up of a number of different parts—sensations,
images, thoughts and feelings. We then have to ask, as the various modalities of
sensations, images, feelings and thoughts appear to be somewhat different from
each other, what are the attributes that (a) put them in the same class and (b) how
can these attributes be varied so that a visual sensation can be differentiated from
an auditory one and both from a feeling or a thought? To this we could answer that
the attribute (a) they all share is to be located in the same consciousness module
(and not in the physical world) and to belong to the same Self. Other collections
of these items, of course, will be located in other consciousness modules and
will belong to a different Self. The attributes (b) that enable us to differentiate
them are firstly their obvious qualitative differences (think of a bright red visual
after-image and a deep humming sound) and, in addition (i) that sensations are the
terminal happenings (parts, events, structures) of a representative mechanism
(which thoughts, feelings and images are not); (ii) that visual and somatic sensa-
tions are spatially extended, whereas thoughts and feelings are not; and (iii) the
Self owns all the others, whereas none of them owns the Self (more on the Self
later).
Another important question needs to be addressed. The theory suggests that
each person has his or her own unique consciousness module embedded in a
brane. So do all consciousness modules float around, as it were, in one common
brane? Or does each consciousness module have a brane all to itself? If we cut a
number of planes out of a cube we can confine our cuts to the cube, like cutting
slices of toast out of a loaf of bread. Or we can add extra dimensions for each
slice, thus enlarging the cube dimensionally to a tesseract and successively
beyond. In this second model the Universe has vastly more spatial dimensions
than it does in the first. There is no means of telling which is correct. This is an
empirical matter, at present beyond our reach. A Flatlander can have her physical
44 J. Smythies

body in plane A and her consciousness module in a second plane B that intersects
A. A second Flatlander, with his body in A, can have his consciousness module
in B, or in a third plane C, that also intersects A, and so on for any number of
Flatlanders through D to n.
Then it might be asked, if sensations, images, feelings and thoughts turn out to
be some type of material entities located in a space of their own outside physical
space, what becomes of the concept of ‘mind’? To this one can reply that none of
the discussion presented so far applies to Ryle’s (1949) dispositional concept of
the nature of mind, which is logically different from the phenomenal sense
of ‘mind’ used in this essay that describes the structures and events that can be
observed by introspection, and the entity—the Self—that is doing the observing.
A suitable machine (organism, super-computer) can be dispositionally intelligent,
diligent, tenacious, deceitful, etc., no matter what it is made of; whereas phenom-
enal consciousness requires a particular structure in line with what we can
introspectively observe.
The theory of extended materialism was first formulated by the great chemist
Joseph Priestly in 1777. He first points out that the concept of the soul, or mind,
as an immaterial substance was, in 1777, a novel idea introduced by Descartes.
Before him, and to this day in Hindu philosophy, a dualist mind or soul was
thought of as an “attenuated aërial substance” made of so fine a material as to
be undetectable by the senses. Priestly continues, using Locke’s concept of
‘idea’:
The vulgar who consider spirit as a thin, aerial substance would be exceedingly puzzled if
they were to endeavour to realize the modern idea of a proper immaterial being, since to
them it would seem to have nothing positive in its nature, but only a negation of properties,
although disguised under the positive appellation of spirit. To them it must appear to be
the idea of nothing at all, and to be incapable of supporting any properties. It will not be
denied but that sensations or ideas properly exist in the soul, because it could not otherwise
retain them. . . . Now whatever ideas are in themselves, they are evidently produced by
external objects, and must therefore correspond to them; and since many of the objects or
archetypes of ideas are divisible, it necessarily follows, that the ideas are divisible also . . .
and how is it possible that a thing (be the nature of it be as it may) that is divisible, should
be contained in a substance, be the nature of it likewise be what it may, that is indivisible.
If the archetypes of ideas have extension, the ideas expressive of them, and actually
produced by them, according to certain mechanical laws, must have extension likewise;
and therefore the mind in which they exist, whether it be material or immaterial, must have
extension also. But how anything could have extension, and yet be immaterial, without
coinciding with our idea of mere empty space, I know not. I am therefore bound to
conclude, that the sentient principle in man, containing ideas which certainly have parts [is]
not the simple, indivisible, and immaterial substance that some have imagined it to be; but
something that has real extension and therefore may have the other properties of matter.

Thus Priestly presents the first formulation of a robust material dualism in which
the mind (phenomenal consciousness) is postulated to be composed of a type of
matter extended in a space of its own. As he says “The mind . . . is not immaterial
substance . . . but is something that has real extension and therefore may have the
other properties of matter.”
 Brain and Consciousness 45

The next stage in the development of this type of material dualism was taken by
C. D. Broad (1923), who enquired into the nature of the space in which sensations
(sensa) may be extended.
For reasons already stated, it is impossible that sensa should literally occupy places in
scientific space, though it may not, of course, be impossible to construct a space-like whole
of more than three dimensions, in which sensa of all kinds, and scientific objects literally
have places. If so, I suppose, that scientific space would be one kind of section of such
a quasi-space, and e.g. a visual field would be another kind of section of the same
quasi-space. (pp. 392–393)
Putting Priestly’s and Broad’s suggestions together we get a picture of a
phenomenal consciousness as a spatially extended and material entity located
outside the brain in a space of its own that is one cross-section of a higher-
dimensional space, of which another cross-section encompasses the physical
world. The next step was contributed by H. H. Price (1953), who saw that these
two entities must be connected by a new type of causal relation that connects
events in parallel universes. Further details of this new theory were supplied by
Smythies (1956). The concept that phenomenal space and physical space are
ontologically different spaces has also been expressed by Ayer (1940), Russell
(1948), Moore (1971) and Carr (2008) (and see Smythies, 1994: 149–150, for
details).
This new theory takes care of the ‘pictures in the brain’ problem. The pictures
that fill a person’s visual field are, the theory suggests, located outside her brain in
her consciousness module. They are constructed by a TV-like mechanism. Part of
this mechanism (that functions like the computer inside a digital TV system) is
located in her brain. The other part consists of the TV screen itself (her visual
field), plus a connecting mechanism. This abstracts the information from the brain
and throws it onto the visual field (more on this below). A similar process operates
in the case of her other senses. So we no longer have to worry about how mecha-
nisms as different as nerve nets in the brain and sensory fields in consciousness
could, in some sense, be identical. Experimental evidence, fatal to naïve realism,
that the brain employs information compression technology and virtual reality
mechanisms, as does TV, has been reviewed elsewhere (Smythies, “Philosophy,
Perception and Neuroscience,” in press).

The Little Green Man

This account has been criticized by some (e.g., Crick, 1994; Descartes, 1931;
Ryle, 1949) on the grounds that talking of internal pictures in this way leads to the
infamous ‘homunculus’ and an infinite regress of little green men in heads. The
argument runs as follows: We cannot allow for vision to include internal pictures,
because, if we do, we have to ask what inside the person is looking at these
pictures, and, as Crick (1994: 24) pithily put it, “trying hard to understand what is
going on.” This means that we have to posit a little green man inside our heads,
and inside that little green man’s head, there must be another little green man, and
so on.
46 J. Smythies

However, as Fodor (1981) pointed out, this argument is invalid. He says that
the fact that seeing an object requires an image in our minds does not in the
least entail that experiencing the resulting image requires the same mechanism
(i.e., another picture in the observing Self). The two processes are essentially
different. The mechanistic process that connects the retina to the visual field (i.e.,
extremely sophisticated television) is quite distinct from the ostensively-indicated
interaction between a Self and its visual field.
As I have not yet discussed the Self, this, I feel, is the point to do so. This will
require us to reintroduce a modified form of Cartesian Dualism into the theory.
Some philosophers (e.g., Berkeley) believe in the existence of the Self. As he said
(1949), “How often must I repeat, that I know or am conscious of my own being;
and that myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking active principle
that perceives, knows, wills and operates about ideas. I know that . . . I am there-
fore one individual principle, distinct from color and sound; and, for the same
reason, free from all other sensible things and inert ideas.”
Others do not believe in the existence of the Self. Here I side with Descartes
and Berkeley. Logically there cannot be experiences without the existence of a
subject they are the experiences of. However, the Self is not located in the head of
the physical body—like a pilot in a vessel—as Descartes put it. It is rather located
in the head of the body-image, which is itself a mental entity.
Verbal definitions of the Self are hard to achieve. So, perhaps, an ostensive
definition is better. In this you tell a person to concentrate on, e.g., an after-image
and tell you its color and shape—which she will easily be able to do. Then you can
ask, during this exercise, whether she noticed that there was more than just an
after-image involved: surely there was also her “me” doing the examining, and
such a Self is not extended in space. Likewise, in a dream there is not just a
collection of dream images; there is also a dream Self wandering around in the
dream world experiencing all that is going on therein.
So a complete account of a consciousness module describes a complex
structure with some spatially extended parts (visual and somatic sensations and
images) plus some unextended parts (thoughts and the Self).

Further Advantages of Material Dualism

These further advantages of Material Dualism may be highlighted by
comparing it with the competition.
(i) The Identity Theory (IT) states that phenomenal entities (events) are identi-
cal with certain neural entities (events). As we have seen earlier, phenomenal enti-
ties have observable properties of color, shape and movement. Their NCCs also
have properties in the same categories. These specifications of each property are
different in each case. Thus, IT runs afoul of Leibniz’s Law of the Identity of
Indiscernibles, which states that identical entities must have identical properties.
NCCs certainly carry the same information about what’s “out there” as do
sensations, but they are in different forms. The visual cortex has a topographical
 Brain and Consciousness 47

code (over 30 individual maps) plus a vectorial code. The visual field has only one
topographic code and no vectorial code. How could they be identical? Besides,
it is hard to accept the proposal that a familiar phenomenal object is really just
electrochemical activity in a collection of neurons. It looks like an image on a TV
screen, not a mass of neurons. Identity theorists may hold on to their theory in the
laboratory but, in everyday life, they are naïve realists like everyone else.
The theory of Material Dualism does not have this problem. In that theory the
only thing that neurons do is to generate complex patterns of electro-chemical
activity (Smythies, 2002) that co-vary with the sensory input, perform computa-
tions on that input modulated by memory (see below) and generate behavior.
There is no need to invent tortuous reasons whereby they are identical with
phenomenal objects, or with any ‘act of perception.’ Internally they simply
do their own thing. Externally the new theory postulates that they bear causal
relations with the contents of phenomenal consciousness.
The theory presented here is essentially the same as that presented by Carr
(2008). It differs from that published by Paul Marshall (2005), who is concerned
with the nature of the higher reality experienced by mystics. He supports a
Leibnizian panpsychic idealism. In contrast, the theory that Carr and I support
is a realist theory. Nevertheless, it can explain the facts discovered by parapsy-
chologists (as Carr details) and it can present a plausible account of the place
of a human soul in ‘next world’ along lines similar to those that Price (1953)
proposed.
(ii) Eliminative Materialism (EM) ‘solves’ the problem of the relation of phe-
nomenal objects and their NNCs by denying the existence of the former. We are
asked to believe that Crick’s “vivid internal picture of the world” does not exist
and that we are merely suffering from delusions when we claim that it does. EM
theorists equate phenomenal objects with things like phlogiston and the luminifer-
ous ether, that do not exist either. However, these do not provide good models. We
experience phenomenal objects, but not phlogiston and the ether: “Churchland’s
systematic denials of qualia are transparent fallacies of ambiguity” (Crooks,
2008).
The lack of plausibility of EM can further be demonstrated as follows. The
theory says we have no experience of phenomenal objects, yet we see perfectly
well. However, there are people who really do not experience phenomenal
objects. They suffer from cortical blindness due to occipital lobe damage. There
are other people who can identify external objects, but cannot see them. They are
the patients with blindsight. So a critic of EM can claim that what EM theorists
are claiming to be normal perception is what in fact would happen in the case of
a patient with occipital lobe damage and 100% accurate blindsight. Since no one
would claim that such a patient has normal vision, it would seem that EM runs
into difficulties.
Sherlock Holmes once said that, when trying to solve any problem, one must
first eliminate the impossible: then, whatever is left, no matter how improbable,
48 J. Smythies

must be the truth. I suggest that Naïve Realism, the Identity Theory and Elimina-
tive Materialism are all impossible theories for the reasons reviewed above.
But, however startling it may appear to ‘common sense,’ material dualism is not.
It contains no impossible elements.
(i) The concept that the Universe may be composed of parallel universes is
already part of brane theory in modern physics (Carr, 2008).
(ii) Brane theorists at present have only thought of the contents of any
universe(s) parallel to our own physical universe as being composed of
similar material (quarks, etc.). However, a parallel universe could contain
anything, including sensations and the postulated TV-like mechanism that
transduces brain states to sensations. This mechanism, if such exists, must
contain two parts. If we consider only vision, there is (i) the part that actu-
ally constitutes the visual field carrying its picture of the external world.
This corresponds to the screen of a TV set in that model. But a TV-like
mechanism cannot consist of just a screen, there must be (ii) a mechanism
behind the screen that extracts the requisite information from the visual
cortex and delivers it to the screen. This it could easily do, as every point
in the brain is immediately in contact with the higher-dimensional space
surrounding it—just as every point in a plane is in immediate contact with
the cube of which the plane is a cross-section. We cannot observe this
mechanism by introspection for the same reason that we cannot look
through the screen of a TV set into the works behind. And we cannot see
it by vision, as it lies in a parallel universe outside the range of light cones
in our physical space. It should be noted, however, that parallel universes
are parallel because of their location in space, not because they are in
causal isolation from each other (Price, 1953).
(iii) Physics at present only considers causal relations between entities in one
four-dimensional (4D) universe, and uses only 4D vectors for that pur-
pose. However, there could logically be causal relations between events
in parallel universes (Price, 1953). All that is required are five (or greater
than five) dimensional (D) vectors. An ordinary vector is a directional line
joining two points in a 3 space (or a 4 space-time). To obtain a 5D vector,
take two 4D cross-sections (A and B) of a 5 space. Then a directional line
joining any point in A to any point in B would be a 5D vector (Smythies,
1994).
(iv) The theory is open to experimental test (see Smythies, 1994, for details).
(v) The really startling feature (for stolid ‘common sense’) of material dual-
ism is the already-established fact that we do not experience our own
physical bodies at all. I have become so accustomed to the idea that my
oh-so-familiar ‘body,’ that I feel wrapped around me, as it were, every
moment of every waking day—Descartes’ vessel in which the pilot is so
snugly ensconced—simply is my body that it comes as a severe shock to
 Brain and Consciousness 49

realize that it is not my physical body at all, but rather an image of my

body constructed by my brain. Once one has gotten over that hurdle, the
rest is easy.

Conclusion
Allen (2006) has suggested that, in order to understand consciousness and
its relation to the brain, it may be necessary to engineer a paradigm shift in
our concepts of space and time. Penrose (1989: 144) stated “It is my opinion that
our present pictures of reality, particularly in relation to the nature of time, is due
for a grand shakeup—even greater, perhaps than that which has already been
provided by present-day relativity and quantum mechanics.” Carr (2008) and I
suggest that such a player is already on the stage. The fact that this player has
taken so long to appear may be traced in part to the fact that higher-dimensional
geometry was not available to Joseph Priestly in 1777.

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